The audience chuckled when its name was announced at a Beverly Hills luncheon for Oscar nominees this month, but it is no joke: "Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa" is up for an Academy Award. The makeup and hairstyling category often recognizes films that may not be best-picture prospects. Winners have included "The Fly," "Ed Wood," and "Harry and the Hendersons," although best-picture honorees "Amadeus" and "Driving Miss Daisy" have won, too. In a diverse contest this year, "Bad Grandpa" is up against "The Lone Ranger" and "Dallas Buyers Club."

Though the category can honor subtle styling work that makes characters look gorgeous or period-authentic, what tends to win Oscar statuettes are radical transformations. (Two werewolf movies have won, both by Rick Baker, who has won seven since the award was created in 1982). That development partly is a consequence of the voting process, in which makeup and hair experts elect the nominees but the entire Academy picks the winner.

Putting Faces on 'Bad Grandpa' and Tonto

Makeup artists first submit portfolios of still photographs from films to voting members of the makeup and hairstylists' branch of the Academy. Those voters elect a seven-movie shortlist (which for 2013 also included "American Hustle," "The Great Gatsby," "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," and "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"). Makeup pros from those seven are invited to a one-day December event nicknamed the Bake-Off, where they each present a 10-minute highlight reel. The three official nominees are then elected before the final vote goes to all Academy members, who sometimes appreciate the overall impact of a film's makeup more than the process or effort.

The makeup maestros share highlights and gory details:

'Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa'

"Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa" probably wouldn't exist without the makeup that made a 41-year-old Johnny Knoxville look enough like an elderly codger to trick real people in public, while hidden cameras recorded him performing shocking and R-rated stunts.

"Every day of the shoot hinged on this makeup fooling people who were literally inches from Johnny Knoxville's face," says Stephen Prouty, the film's lead makeup effects artist. Prepping Mr. Knoxville for each day took about two hours and 45 minutes.

"There were eleven pieces total on his head," Mr. Prouty explains. "It's silicone prosthetics that are very thin and supple. We apply those in pieces. They overlap. The first part is gluing all those pieces onto him. It's a glue that was originally developed as a medical adhesive, for things like colostomy bags. We go down just below his collarbone, to mid-chest. The second stage is to paint everything [crow's feet and other facial blemishes]. The third stage is all the hair work."

Mr. Knoxville got a fake mustache, thinning white hair, and overgrown fuzz in his ears that served a purpose. Because he was improvising and couldn't always see where cameras were, Mr. Knoxville wore an earpiece to receive instructions from director Jeff Tremaine. The props staff couldn't quite get it to look like a hearing aid, so they covered it with hairs. Mr. Knoxville also had his hands made up to appear bony and veiny.

Most of all, during extended shoots getting himself injured or making inappropriate remarks to strangers, he had to stay convincingly old.

"Once he was into a scene, we might not see him for anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. So he had to be bulletproof," Mr. Prouty says. "We were in the back of a minivan around the corner just to make sure everything stayed stuck onto his head."

'The Lone Ranger'

Joel Harlow, makeup department head on "The Lone Ranger," has become Johnny Depp's regular makeup artist, a job that given the actor's commitment to elaborate makeup is a bit like being head plumber at Niagara Falls. Mr. Harlow was working with Mr. Depp on "The Rum Diary" in Puerto Rico in 2009 when he came across Kirby Sattler's "I Am Crow" painting of a Native American with white face paint and a bird atop his head. That became Mr. Depp's signature look as the Lone Ranger's Comanche pal Tonto. Mr. Harlow devised a vacu-formed skullcap that went under Mr. Depp's wig, and via a series of nylon bolts it held a fake dead bird on the actor's head even when he was on top of a moving train.

Possibly a bigger challenge was the aged version of Tonto, at 110 to 120 years old, who tells the tale of the movie as a flashback from inside a Wild West diorama at a 1933 carnival.

"We had a full upper-body aging makeup on him," Mr. Harlow says. "Most of the time, you do a head and shoulders and hands, and you get to hide the body under wardrobe. He was completely shirtless. We had nowhere to hide anything." The diorama lighting didn't help: "It's there so you can see everything."

Tonto was just one character of many in a big-budget period film set in 19th-century Texas. "I don't think I have ever worked on a film with as much diverse makeup. We had old-age makeup, character makeup, creature makeup, beauty makeup, prosthetics, facial hair, elaborate wigs," Mr. Harlow says. He studied Sergio Leone's Westerns and Time-Life books on the Old West to make sure he nailed the cowboy look.

"The second you don't do facial hair right in a western, it's like nothing else matters," he says. "You might as well say to the audience 'we're making a movie here'."

'Dallas Buyers Club'

"I had a $250 makeup budget for the entire film," says Robin Mathews, head of the makeup department on "Dallas Buyers Club."

"I don't think most people have even heard of anything like that."

To capture the appearance of AIDS patients in the 1980s, Ms. Mathews conferred with an infectious disease expert at the National Institutes of Health. "He showed me a ton of photos, especially from the '80s, where the full-blown symptoms are drastic. Looking at those photos was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do for research. The three top things that happen to full-blown AIDS patients is they get very skeletal in the face, they get a rash called seborrheic dermatitis in their face, and they get lesions all over their body. So that's what we did in different stages to all the AIDS patients including Matthew and Jared."

Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto both did their part by losing by substantial weight for the roles, though that created a challenge too.

"We shot extremely out of sequence," Ms. Mathews says. "I would have to take them back and forth between their healthiest look and possibly their sickest look in the film up to five times in a day. They lost over 40 pounds apiece to play the roles, but when you see them looking healthier in the film, where they've got their medications and look about 25 pounds heavier, that's makeup."

Mr. Leto's character, Rayon, is transgender. "So once I did the sickness I covered it with beauty products that any female would use. I used a lot of MAC products," Ms. Mathews says. "The character took female hormones sometimes, but sometimes forgot, so the beard might grow in a little. We found a foundation called Joe Blasco, a real heavy kind of pancake that they used back then."

The movie is a period piece too, set in 1980s Dallas. That required specific hairstyling. Mr. McConaughey grew his own mustache. And "our hair department head, Adruitha Lee, made the most amazing mullets," Ms. Mathews says.

I wanted you to know that Joe Blasco is an awesome brand and has taught many about the art of special-effects make-up. It is not a "foundation".??? I suggest that you contact any of the students who have learned the art from the schools. They are the best.

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